Shades of Red
by Mei1105
Summary: Oneshot. She had no parents. She had no god. She could not afford to be scared, or selfish. It had not been selfish of her to feel lonely, or to want a friend badly...Lucy reflects on humanity, just moments after the loss of her first and only friend.


**A/N: **I'm not quite sure where this one came from – something to do with a lecture workshop that kind of grew and spread. Either way, it's just a stream of thought really.

Set in episode eight of the anime, during Lucy's flashback. This takes place just after the death of the dog, and the murder of her classmates.

OOO

**Shades of Red**

Blood was dripping down the lily petals, forming a pool on the desk, to join the crimson that had splattered there already.

She didn't move a muscle. It was as if the last five seconds had happened through a window or television set. She wasn't really there. She was detached from the ugly truth of the situation. Her eyes remained on the classroom wall opposite her, watching the fresh stain on the wall with remote fascination. She had never seen such a shade of red before.

Her ears were picking up the steady dripping sounds, the only noise that filled the room aside from her own heavy breathing. It was a beautiful silence compared to the chaos of the last few minutes.

Slowly, she moved her eyes to scan the ruined classroom.

_They will need new chairs, _she thought. _And tables. And new books...lots of new books._

She did not flinch at the torso and head, now lying discarded under one of the desks. Nor at the arms and legs littering the floor. The blank eyes of her deceased tormentor stared back, a flicker of malice still present even in death...

"_Hey freak! Hey you, I'm talking to you!"_

She wondered how their parents would feel, when they heard that their children had been torn apart. Parents were like an omnipotent being that human children ran to when they were scared, or wanted someone to fulfil their own selfish desires. Like each child's personal god, who were so blind to the faults of their offspring that they would forgive any sin.

_They wouldn't listen to the truth. They would refuse to believe that their precious little angels could beat a fellow classmate's best friend to death right in front of their eyes..._

She had no parents. She had no god. She could not afford to be scared, or selfish. It had not been selfish of her to feel lonely, or to want a friend badly. It was a human emotion...despite what they had said to her, she was human. Only humans could feel grief like this...

She finally flinched as her eyes landed on the defeated lump of fur and flesh that resembled a deflated stuffed toy – only this was no toy, and he had not bled stuffing when he had been harmed.

"_Hey! The dog stopped moving..."_

A pool of blood still oozed from the animal's side, and the vase that had been the weapon still had the ugly splash of red on the side. It reminded her of a ruined painting. She wondered if the children, in their younger years, had taken pots of red paint and splashed it onto their fellow classmate's school artwork in a similar way, destroying the beautiful images in a cruel premonition of their future lives.

The dead girl's eyes seemed to draw her in now. In a way, that had been the cruellest part – to find out that the one person she had ever dared to trust had been the cause of this. In that moment, her last piece of belief in humans had vanished, along with the life of her best friend.

"_Stop it!"_

_There was a pause in the beatings as all of the boys looked up in surprise. The dog's yelping ceased at once, and her heart had stopped it's desperate thudding._

"_Why? You told us about the dog."_

_Betrayal was a horrible emotion – even worse than she had expected. It drained all the fight from her, and left her clinging to a simple plea. This couldn't be true...she would deny it any second now..._

"'_Cause...'cause...I didn't know you'd do something like this!"_

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! She had been so stupid to trust her!

She had been right. They were the inhuman ones. All human beings were miserable creatures, who sought to justify their own existence by causing each other pain. They measured their own survival on the impact they had on the lives of those around them. And the easiest way to measure that was by how much torment they could inflict.

The boys...they had justified their existence, given themselves a purpose, by tormenting her. Calling her an inhuman freak of nature, and believing that this made them better than her. She was a better person than any of them. She had done the world a favour by ridding it of three cruel humans who were capable of killing a defenceless puppy.

The teachers would come here soon...then the police, in their black covered bodies, with their flashing lights to intimidate any wrongdoers. She couldn't stay here. She would have to run. Away from this place of misery, that bred cruel people like the ones who now lay dead around her. No one would miss her. No one at the orphanage cared, the teachers found her creepy, and she had no friends now. It would be better this way.

The police would look for her, when they finally realised she was missing, thinking that she had been kidnapped, or maybe had run away because she had seen the whole horrible incident, and was too emotionally traumatised to think straight.

They would never for one second suspect the truth...that she had done all this. That she had ripped four classmates apart and left their bodies scattered, and their blood decorating the walls.

She had to leave...

But first she had a friend to bury.

Carefully, she moved towards the body of the dog, picked it up and cuddled it close to her. And for the first time in her life, she allowed herself to cry.


End file.
